Island Parent February/March 2021

whatever I didn’t like. So I covertly weeded out the neon and
bedazzled items from her closet. I bought only basics—no
more patterns, faux fur or sequins. It didn’t work. My daughter
found a work-around: shopping in the costume play bin
and even items from her brother’s closet to accessorize her
bland wardrobe.
I realized that refining my daughter’s taste was hopeless. I
decided to take my friend’s advice and create a clear boundary:
kids get creative control over their clothing and parents
get to decide what’s appropriate. I silently nodded when my
daughter asked if I liked what she was wearing (neon shorts
over jeans). But when she asked if I would buy her fishnet
stockings, I did a mental scan of my jurisdiction and responded
with a hard “no.”
This division of control should have made the clothing
struggles easier, but it didn’t feel that way. The real issue
began to emerge: I had an opinion of what I thought looked
best and I wanted her to wear that. My daughter also had an
opinion and she wanted to wear that. She was dressing age
appropriate, it was just quirky.
While I bemoaned my daughter’s style, I also admired her
whimsy and confidence. One morning after she assembled yet
another puzzling outfit, I watched her admire herself in the
mirror. It was the same look I had seen on my step-mother’s
face a few years earlier when we were getting ready together
in her bathroom. After my step-mom put the final touches
on her makeup she stepped back from the mirror and said,
“Wow, I am gorgeous.”
Time stood still for me in that moment. I was a teenager
again, hustling to feel pretty and accepted. Just like my birth
mother, I was beautiful but struggled to know my worth. I
wished that both my birth mother and I had loved ourselves
as boldly and confidently as my step-mother loved herself.
Now, as my daughter admired herself in the mirror that
morning, I recognized that same confidence. Her style was
not polished or trendy, but I could see that her capacity for
self-love and self-acceptance was greater than I had ever
known. And while being able to properly mix colours and
patterns is a valuable skill to learn, the more important lessons
were ones that I didn’t need to teach. They were already
inside of my daughter: Be yourself. Love who you are. Wear
what makes you feel good. Don’t care what other people
think.
Most days now, when my daughter appears in front of me
ready for school and ask how she looks, I ask her what she
thinks. She doesn’t need me policing her style. Looking and
feeling good for her means using fashion for personal expression
and creativity. In that sense, she may be more refined
than me.
Sarah Seitz is a working mother, writer
and consumer of coffee and books—in that
order. She writes about the messy and real
parts of parenting and reveals her underbelly
in her words. You can read more of
Sarah’s writing at sarahseitz.ca.
IslandParent.ca
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